


let me shake this shadow

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Rounds of Kink [11]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Community: rounds_of_kink, Complicated Relationships, Exes, F/F, Kitchen Sex, Oral Sex, Sex on Furniture, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:41:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24540217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: Even though she can’t hear or see anything out of order, Laura knows that Kate is still in the apartment. After two years apart, two years where Laura did her absolute best to forget about Kate and the hell she rained down upon her life, there’s no way Kate would simply break into her apartment, see that Laura wasn’t home, and leave again. That would be cruel, but it wouldn’t be cruelenoughfor Kate’s tastes.(If her perfume hasn’t changed, Laura doubts that has changed either.)
Relationships: Kate Argent/Laura Hale
Series: Rounds of Kink [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/786411
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: 36 - Round Thirty-Six of Rounds of Kink





	let me shake this shadow

**Author's Note:**

> written for round 36 of [Rounds of Kink! ](https://rounds-of-kink.livejournal.com/) The prompt I had was "long time no see - sex on, against, or under furniture". 
> 
> title loosely borrowed from [Paradise Lost, a Poem by John Milton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGTY0bflh4) by The Used.

As soon as Laura walks through her front door, she knows that something is off. 

It’s nothing visual – everything in her front hallway is exactly how she left it. Her jackets are still hanging on the hooks secured to the wall on her left, and her boots and shoes are still piled haphazardly on the rack underneath the jackets. The bathroom door on her right is still half-open, and a quick glance into the small, narrow room is enough to reveal that there are no surprises awaiting her in there. 

It’s nothing auditory either – everything that she can hear, the heavy _thud thud thud_ of footsteps in the apartment above her, the faint drip of the bathtub faucet, the elevator creaking down the hallway, is all par for the course. Nothing unusual there. 

But the _smell_ is unusual. 

Even after the door has closed behind her with a reverberating bang, she remains motionless, feet planted on her scuffed doormat, keys clenched in her fist. With every inhale through her nose, she’s assaulted with a new wave of memories, all of them attached to a woman whose bright smile and clever tongue were mere stage dressing, smokescreens disguising her true nature. 

At the crest of one particular wave, she exhales every ounce of air from her chest and refuses to let any back in. Standing absolutely still, she keeps her eyes locked on the wall in front of her, where the hallway splits into two paths, one leading to her kitchen and living room and the other leading to her bedroom, and tells herself not to breathe. She _demands_ that her lungs cease their incessant pleas. 

Naturally, they refuse to listen, and when she takes another gasping breath, the hint of perfume lingering in the air, containing notes of vanilla and tobacco and wood, fills every inch of her lungs, until it feels like she might well choke on it. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Kate has made it hard for her to breathe. 

Even though she can’t hear or see anything out of order, she knows that Kate is still in the apartment. After two years apart, two years where Laura did her absolute best to forget about Kate and the hell she rained down upon her life, there’s no way Kate would simply break into her apartment, see that Laura wasn’t home, and leave again. That would be cruel, but it wouldn’t be cruel _enough_ for Kate’s tastes. 

(If her perfume hasn’t changed, Laura doubts that has changed either.)

Tightening her fingers on her keys, until they’re digging into the meat of her palms, she thinks about turning around and leaving. She could give Derek a call, come up with some kind of excuse so that she could crash there for a night or two. Maybe, if she stayed away long enough, if she turned around and left, she could wait Kate out. 

She knows it’s a foolish plan even as it plays out in her head. She knows that she wouldn’t wait long enough. After only a few hours, she would have herself convinced that the danger was gone and she’d return to the apartment, only to find herself right back in this same spot, paralyzed by the smell of her ex-girlfriend’s perfume. 

If Kate is back here, she’s back here for a reason, and she’s not going to leave until she can fulfill that reason. She’s not going to let Laura off the hook until she wants to. Running away will only prolong the matter. 

Better to just bite the bullet and deal with it now.

She takes her time taking off her jacket and boots, trying the whole time not to breathe through her nose, but before long, she’s run out of ways to delay. If she stands around for much longer, Kate is bound to appear anyways, bound to use Laura’s procrastination as a way to take complete control of the situation. 

This is her own goddamn apartment. The least Laura can do is stand up for herself in her own space. 

Ignoring the warning bells going off inside her head, she walks down the hallway and glances to her right, into her lightless bedroom. Waiting in the dark to jump out and spook her doesn’t really seem like Kate’s style, so she turns left instead. Her small living room is at the end of the hallway, but a door on the right opens up into her kitchen first, and it’s here that she turns. 

Kate is sitting on the counter, one long leg crossed over the other. She’s still wearing her boots, brown ones that reach up to mid-calf, and Laura is annoyed (but not surprised) to see that the boots have left smudges of dirt on the cupboard underneath the counter. There’s a lighter in one of her hands, and while Laura doesn’t expect that Kate is planning on actually using it (the apartment doesn’t smell like gasoline or kerosene – it’s probably just for fun, the arsonist’s version of a fidget spinner), the sight of it still makes red-hot anger flare up behind Laura’s eyes. In her other hand, Kate is holding a banana, one definitely taken from the fruit bowl on the table. As she turns to glance at Laura, face showing only a flicker of interest, she takes a bite out of it. 

For some reason, Laura finds that almost as infuriating as the lighter. 

“Hey Laur,” she says. The way the nickname slips easily from her tongue makes Laura’s fingers clench even tighter around her keys. “Long time no see.” 

Laura wants so desperately to spit out a reply, but she refuses to be sucked back in this quickly. She refuses to let Kate play her so easily, like an instrument she’s long since mastered. 

So instead, she carefully sets her keys and bag down on the table and settles herself in for the battle, leaning against the counter on the opposite side of the room, fingers curling tightly around the slight lip of the counter. The wood underneath her fingertips is cracked and weakened, and she can only hope that it won’t break apart – that would sure as hell be one way to betray to Kate the maelstrom of feelings inside her. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, keeping her gaze on Kate, even though doing so feels as dangerous as staring into the sun. There’s no point in asking exactly how Kate got into her apartment – something as simple as a lock was never going to keep her away. 

Frankly, Laura is amazed that it took her this long to show up. 

Kate takes another bite of her banana. “Do I need a reason?” The way she says it, it’s almost like she’s genuinely forgotten about the two long years that have gone by since they last saw each other. It’s almost like everything that happened before that final encounter, the feud between their entire families that Laura foolishly thought they could end, it’s almost like none of that matters to her. 

Which, for Kate, it may not. Time may have already healed all of her wounds (superficial as they may have been). She was always resilient like that. 

“ _I_ need a reason,” Laura replies, fingernail prying a piece of wood loose from underneath the counter. “And it better be a damn good one.”

Kate laughs, sounding almost _fond_ , and shakes her head, long hair falling around her face. It’s darker than it was last time and more wild, a mass of waves cascading down to brush the shoulders of her leather jacket. Sliding off the counter, she drops her banana peel into the small trash can tucked into the corner and turns back to face Laura. She tucks the lighter into the pocket of her jacket, and even though the air is so filled with her perfume that Laura’s temples are pounding with it, it’s still easier to breathe with the lighter out of sight. 

“I missed you,” she says with a shrug. She doesn’t hop back up onto the counter; instead, she leans back against it, mirroring Laura’s position. Only a few paces separate them, since the table is tucked off to one side – if Laura wanted to, she could cross that space in a matter of seconds. She could try and take Kate by surprise, try and wrap her hands tight around Kate’s throat, squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until her eyes go empty and cold. She could steal that lighter from her pocket, flick the flame on and press it against Kate’s skin, see if it would be enough to catch her hair and clothes alight. She’s thought of doing those exact things, day after day, month after month. Whenever she catches a hint of burning wood in the air, she thinks about all of those things and more, thinks about hurting Kate the way she tried to hurt her. 

But doing those things would even the playing field between them, and Laura refuses to do that. She refuses to be the same kind of person as Kate, refuses to indulge her violent whims and wants. 

But hearing _I missed you_ from Kate’s mouth, the way she says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, it takes all of her willpower to not lunge across the space between them and claw and bite and tear and _hurt_. 

“You missed me,” Laura responds, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible. “Are you actually fucking serious?” 

The tiniest frown crinkles Kate’s mouth, and her brow furrows. She almost looks _upset_ , and the sheer audacity of it is enough to make Laura’s head pound harder. 

“Of course I’m serious. We didn’t exactly have a clean break, you know. I tried-“

Laura doesn’t know what the rest of Kate’s sentence was going to be, but she does know that she doesn’t care. A dam breaks inside of her, and even if she wanted to hold herself back any longer, she couldn’t. As soon as she opens her mouth, a torrent of words spills out, like water plummeting over the edge of a very tall cliff. 

“You _tried_?” She takes a step away from the counter, only faintly aware of a sharp pain in her fingertip as a splinter drives into her skin. “You tried what, Kate? Tried to murder my family because your asshole dad told you to, because he refused to accept that my mom was a better mayor than he would ever be? Because you succeeded with that, just like you succeeded in convincing me that you weren’t like him, that you wanted to try and mend things between our families.”

“Do you think that was easy for me?” Kate moves away from the counter, so that they’re a mere few feet away from each other. “Do you think I liked stringing you along like-“

“Yes!” Laura yells. Every word that falls from Kate’s mouth feels like a knife lashing against her skin, and if she simply lets Kate run her mouth, she thinks that she might bleed out before she can get a chance to stand her ground. “I think you did!” More memories flood back to her, possibly triggered by the smell of Kate’s perfume or by her sheer proximity. She remembers spending afternoons with Kate in the forest that surrounded her family home, staying far away from the homestead so that they had less of a chance of being discovered by one of her siblings or cousins, afternoons spent stretched out on a blanket, hours of getting lost in the beauty of nature and the beauty of how their bodies fit together. She remembers the plans they had come up with so that they could go on dates without getting caught, the complex arrangements they made so they could have dinner without being recognized. She remembers the nights spent in Kate’s bed on the evenings when her brother wasn’t home, grasping at the sheets, unable to taste or smell or think of anything but Kate, utterly consumed by her. 

All of it had been a lie, and Laura is fairly certain that Kate _had_ enjoyed spinning each and every one of those little lies, until there was a mound of them, a mound big enough to bury the both of them. 

Before she can be swept away by this newest tide of memories, she forces herself to forge ahead. “I _know_ you did, Kate. I know you liked it, because it was the only thing you and your whole fucking family were ever good at – lying and destroying people’s lives.”

It’s not quite a killing blow, but the words definitely cause some damage – Kate’s hands clench into fists at her sides, and her lips curl into a soundless snarl. Laura would be lying if she said that the sight doesn’t make her feel relieved. It feels like they’re back on even ground now, feels like she has a chance at spinning this evening into her favor. Maybe, if she keeps it up, she can get Kate out of her apartment before too much damage is done. 

Unfortunately, before she can think of her next move, Kate’s fists loosen, and her snarl, the expression that most closely resembles the feral creature of rage and anger living under her skin, transforms into a smirk that almost looks _pleased_. 

“That’s not the _only_ thing I’m good at,” she says and, before Laura can react, Kate crosses what little space remains between them, crowds Laura back into the unforgiving edge of the counter, and kisses her. 

Her perfume hasn’t changed, and neither has her mouth. The press of it against Laura’s is as bruising as it always was. Even with her mouth only slightly parted, Laura can feel the edge of Kate’s teeth, the _threat_ of them, skimming against her bottom lip. Her fingers are tight around Laura’s waist, like she’s trying to dig down through the layers of her clothes and press bruises into the skin there. 

It feels like suffocating. She wants so badly to yank away, wants to shove Kate away from her, wants to grab her keys and bolt out of there before things go any farther, before she has to find out what this moment is going to do to her mind. 

She hates Kate. She has spent the better part of two years hating her, spent two years trying to keep herself from exploding whenever something reminded her of Kate. She knows that she is justified in her feelings; even if it wasn’t for Kate burning her home down with the intention of taking out as many of the Hale family as she could (an act that only failed due to an exquisite act of timing) and only escaping justice due to a lack of physical evidence (if there was one thing to be said about the Argents, it's that they’re more clever than they deserve), the fact remains that Kate manipulated her. Every single one of their days together, every action that Kate initiated between them, was part of the greater Argent plan first and part of her own amusement second. 

But, unfortunately, as much as Laura hates to admit it, even though there’s revulsion churning in her stomach at the feeling of Kate touching her, Kate was right about one thing. 

Lying and destroying people’s lives aren’t her only talents. 

One of her other ones was sex. 

If Laura is going to go through with this (which, God help her, she thinks she’s going to, suffocation be damned), she can at least give as good as she gets. She may not be able to scar Kate the same way that Kate scarred her, but she can damn well _try_. 

As Kate leans back, presumably to gloat, Laura lashes forward and _bites_ , relishes in the feeling of Kate’s lower lip dimpling and buckling between her teeth. A startled curse falls out of Kate’s mouth, and a blossom of pride, almost as hot as the rage still simmering inside of her, warms and fills Laura’s chest. 

Sadly, Kate recovers all too quickly. She digs her fingers hard into Laura’s waist, and when her teeth loosen, Kate tears herself away, rough enough that Laura tastes blood in her mouth. 

“ _There’s_ the Laura I missed,” Kate murmurs, lips curling into a cruel grin as she leans back in, breath hot on the curve of Laura’s cheek. “Is that all you got?” 

It’s absolutely a goad, and falling for it means giving Kate power again. But, on the other hand, if Laura can keep Kate busy, then she won’t have to listen to any more goads. 

It’s not a perfect scenario, but given that she doesn’t think Kate will be leaving anytime soon, it’s what she has to work with. 

Laura reaches down and pushes Kate’s hands away from her. Even after the contact is broken, she can feel the touch lingering there for a moment, and she knows that if Kate’s goal was to leave bruises behind, she’s probably succeeded. 

Laura refuses to be the only one here who ends up bruised. 

“Take that damn jacket off,” she demands. Kate raises an eyebrow at her but otherwise complies, shucking off the jacket and tossing it aside. Laura can hear the lighter in the pocket clink as it strikes the floor, and for a moment, she’s tempted to go fetch it and toss it out the window. Instead, she seizes Kate by the patch of exposed skin between the hem of her cropped tank top and her dark jeans, pivots, and shoves her towards the kitchen table. Kate seems to go willingly, moves backwards until she’s pressed against the table. There’s a spark in her eyes that almost looks like amusement, and it’s so bright that Laura momentarily wishes that Kate’s jacket was within arm’s reach so that she could turn it into a makeshift blindfold. 

But since she’s not willing to move to retrieve it, she’ll simply have to avoid looking Kate in the eyes, will have to refuse to give her that pleasure.

“Not saying I looked,” Kate says, which absolutely means that she did look (and damn, how does she look so _natural_ leaning back against the table, almost like it was her choice to be there and not Laura’s), “but don’t you have a bed in the other room?” 

“I think we’re fine here,” Laura replies. She has no intentions of letting Kate into her bedroom, not if she can avoid it. She needs to have at least one room in her apartment that isn’t going to be tainted by the lingering ghost of Kate’s presence for weeks to come. Taking a cue from Kate’s playbook, she crowds Kate back against the table and dives in for a kiss, one filled with bruising lips and snaps of teeth and vicious lashes of tongues. She refuses to relent, even when her lungs ache and scream for air, until Kate finally takes the hint and slides up onto the top of the table. It creaks slightly underneath her weight, which should be a reason to pause – it wasn’t an expensive purchase, and Laura doesn’t exactly trust its structural integrity – but, frankly, if it ends up breaking, it’ll probably leave Kate with scratches and splinters, and that sounds like as happy an ending as Laura can expect from this evening. 

Kate leans back onto her elbows, head resting against the wall, long legs dangling over the edge of the table. Her shirt has ridden up almost further, hovering around the bottom of her bra, exposing her toned stomach, dotted with old scars. 

“As long as we’re careful, I think we can make it work up here,” Kate says, sweeping her long hair back over her shoulder. “Care to join me?”

“No,” Laura answers bluntly, grabbing a chair and sliding it between Kate’s spread legs. She settles herself down, hooks her fingers into Kate’s belt loops, and yanks Kate forward, until she’s hovering on the edge of the table. Her feet come up to balance on the very edge of the chair, pressed tight into the sides of Laura’s thighs. 

“Sounds kind of boring, if you ask me,” Kate replies, letting out an overly dramatic sigh as she pulls her shirt over her head and tosses it aside. The sound makes Laura’s blood boil. She used to find those kinds of things amusing, used to love Kate’s flair for the dramatic, the way she could so quickly embody a role just for the sake of a joke. 

Now, it pisses her off. After two years, Kate came back into her life, all because she apparently missed her, and even after all of that time, she still can’t be her real self, can’t let Laura have so much as a _glimpse_. 

Maybe, at this point, Kate no longer even knows who she is. Maybe she’s spent so long turning herself into different characters, pulled this way and that by the whims of her family, that she’s lost the core of herself. 

“You can leave, if you have a problem with that,” Laura snaps, before she reaches up and scratches her fingers down Kate’s sides. Her nails are clipped fairly short, but they have enough of an edge to leave red welts on Kate’s tanned skin, and Kate’s faint hiss is music to Laura’s ears. Laura keeps her eyes on Kate as she moves her fingertips to the button of Kate’s jeans, watches her expression as she gets it out of the way, to see if Kate gives anything away, shows any sign of emotion one way or the other. 

She looks intrigued, that’s for certain, and at least a little turned on, but other than that, she’s still impossibly guarded. 

It’s _infuriating_. 

Tearing her eyes away from Kate’s face, she seizes the waistband of Kate’s jeans and yanks them down her thighs. She manages to get them to Kate’s knees before Kate sits up and finishes the job, tearing them down one leg and over her boot (a step that involves at least one ripped seam, if Laura’s ears don’t deceive her), leaving them dangling from her other leg. 

“There,” she says, leaning back against the wall, shoving a stray lock of hair away from her face. “That easier for you?” There’s a note of impatience in her voice, and Laura doesn’t bother to hide her grin. 

Impatience. She can work with that. 

She doesn’t deign to answer Kate’s question. Instead, she turns her attention to Kate’s underwear, a pair of black boyshorts with a lace waistband. If Laura leaned back and reached to her left, she’d be able to reach her cutlery drawer. She could grab one of her knives and maybe, just maybe, use it to slice through the taut fabric, tear the underwear to shreds. Maybe she wouldn’t even get that far – maybe, at the sight of the knife, Kate’s instincts would kick in. Maybe she’d jump straight into fight or flight mode. Maybe they would end up on the linoleum, fighting for dear life. 

It’s still not a bad idea, but frankly, there are too many possibilities associated with it, too many paths that it could lead to, so instead of reaching for the drawer, she pulls Kate’s underwear down to her ankles, lets Kate slide one foot out so they’re dangling around her ankle, prevented from plummeting to the floor by the bunched up leg of her jeans. 

There’s nothing in Laura’s way now, and she wastes no time in moving. Scooting the chair a little closer to the table (it makes a godawful screeching sound as it slides across the tiles), she leans forward and drags her tongue through the wetness between Kate’s legs. The gasp she receives in return is gratifying, and she repeats the motion, pausing at the top so that she can press the tip of her tongue against Kate’s clit. As she starts her next sweep, she drags two of her fingers along the inside of Kate’s thigh, gathering up the wetness lingering there, before she slides them inside. Kate gasps again, and her heels press into the tops of Laura’s thighs, dig in _hard_ as Laura increases her speed. 

As the minutes tick by, as her kitchen echoes with the slick sounds of her mouth and fingers working on Kate, Laura realizes that there’s yet another thing about Kate that hasn’t changed. 

Namely, either she’s doing a very good job at faking it, or being eaten out is still one of her favorite things. 

She doesn’t shy away from making noise – a litany of gasps and moans and curses fall from her mouth, directed up towards the ceiling. Every so often, she props herself up so that she can thread her fingers into Laura’s long hair but inevitably, after a few moments, she ends up lying back again, fingers scrabbling at the table’s surface. Her feet occasionally slip off Laura’s thighs, but they return to the same spots. Her hips buck, grinding up into Laura’s mouth, and her thighs twitch, tighten around Laura’s head until it’s almost painful. 

Laura swiftly loses count of how many times Kate comes. Every time she thinks about pulling away, Kate does something to spur her back into action, grabs at her hair or arches her back or demands, in a voice growing raspier by the minute, that she keeps going. 

And Laura does. Even when her fingers come dangerously close to cramping, even when her jaw gets sore and stiff, she keeps going, because for the first time since she walked into the apartment and was bludgeoned with the smell of Kate’s perfume, she doesn’t entirely hate Kate. She can almost remember what it was like to _like_ her. 

That, and the fact that quitting would mean giving up, and she’s not going to let Kate have that on her.

By the time Kate finally pushes Laura away, muttering something that sounds like _no more_ , they’re both a mess. Every inch of Kate’s bare skin is flushed, and there’s sweat dappling her collarbone, between her breasts, along her neck. Her thighs, her core and the table underneath her, not to mention Laura’s face and fingers, are all drenched with come. As Laura pushes back in her chair, she wipes her mouth and chin with the sleeve of her shirt, and the fabric comes back darkened. 

She has some serious cleaning to do, that’s for sure. 

She’s throbbing where the seam of her jeans is pressing between her legs, and if the denim wasn’t black, she’s sure that she’d see a damp spot there if she looked down. It wouldn’t take much to get herself off – all she’d have to do is circle her fingers on her clit a few times, and she’d tip over the edge. 

But she has no intentions of doing that. She has no intentions on touching herself tonight and, perhaps more importantly, she has no intentions on _Kate_ touching her tonight. 

But she’s not going to spring that on Kate quite yet. 

Instead, she bides her time. She gets to her feet, maneuvering out from between Kate’s dangling legs, and leans back against the counter, takes in the full tableau spread out on her table. It takes some time for Kate to regain some control over herself; when she does finally sit up, her chest is still heaving, and her hair is a sweaty, tousled mess. As she gets to her feet, leaning over to pull her underwear and jeans back on, she flashes a smirk up at Laura. 

“Damn,” she says with an appreciative chuckle, scooping up her shirt as well. “I forgot how good you were at that.” 

Laura allows a small smile to cross her face. 

“You still miss me?” she asks. Kate laughs again. 

“You’ve certainly helped dull the feeling. Jesus. I can barely feel my legs.” Kate’s eyes flick to Laura, travel from her neck to her thighs and back up, and Laura knows exactly what she’s thinking. She knows that Kate is about to offer her some relief. 

Before the words can leave Kate’s mouth, Laura speaks again.

“Good.” Stooping to grab Kate’s jacket, she rummages through the pockets before she tosses it at her, hard enough that it hits her in the chest with an audible sound. “Now get the hell out of my house.” 

It takes a moment for realization to settle over Kate’s face – when it does, it’s swiftly followed by anger. It’s an expression that contorts her features into something cruel and all too recognizable. 

“What did you just say?” she asks quietly, her voice as hard as steel. 

“You heard me.” Laura’s been preparing herself for this for the last few minutes, practicing in her head even while she coaxed another orgasm out of Kate, and she’s glad that her voice remains as strong as it did in her head. “Get out. And don’t come back.” 

Unsurprisingly, Kate remains in place, eyes unflinchingly on Laura’s. “And what if I wanted to stay? Maybe even for a few days?” 

Laura opens her palm, revealing the lighter she stole from Kate’s jacket before she tossed it at her. “Then maybe I’ll try playing with fire. If you like it so much, there has to be some kind of appeal, right?” She hopes that Kate doesn’t call her bluff – the thought of actually bringing the lighter to life makes her stomach churn – but if she can remain steady enough, she thinks she has a shot. 

“You wouldn’t do that,” Kate replies with a scoff, but even as she says it, she finishes putting her jacket on, and Laura feels a bolt of triumph in her gut. 

Summoning every ounce of strength she has, she leans forward into Kate’s space, fingers still wrapped tightly around the lighter, and whispers, “I would burn this entire fucking building down if it meant that was the last I’d see of you.” 

Kate rolls her eyes, but when Laura remains in her space, thumb inching closer to the spark wheel on the lighter, Kate’s smirk inches off her face and disappears entirely. 

“Your loss,” she eventually says, after a pause that goes on so long that Laura almost breaks. “You’ll miss me. I know you will. You were always sentimental like that.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” Laura answers truthfully. “Now get the fuck out.”

Thankfully, Kate doesn’t fight any further; with a last _fuck you_ under her breath, she exits the apartment without a glance backwards. As soon as the front door is fully closed, she bolts over, locks both the main lock and the deadbolt, and collapses to the floor. As she hits the ground, she realizes that she’s still holding the lighter, and she tosses it into the bathroom and wipes her hand off on the thigh of her jeans. Her heart is racing, and her chest is growing tighter by the moment, and it’s only the fact that she knows Kate is still nearby that keeps her from grabbing her keys and running over to Derek’s.

As is, she thinks she’ll need to wait for at least an hour before it’s safe for her to leave again. 

Might as well use the time for something useful. 

She stands up just long enough to fish her phone out of her jacket pocket. Trying her best to ignore the myriad of ways in which her body is alerting her to the panic expanding inside of her, she brings up a new tab and starts searching for apartment listings. 

She can’t stay here. She thought that maybe, if she kept Kate contained to one room, she’d be able to get over it, but she knows that isn’t the case. She’s never going to feel safe here again, not in this place, where Kate could so easily return, over and over again, where she could wear Laura down until she’s not even recognizable as herself. 

As she opens a listing for a one bedroom on the other side of town, she slams her teeth into her lower lip and swallows a scream. 

Two years wasn’t long enough for Kate to get over her. 

How long is she going to have to _wait?_

When will she be _free?_

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
